Tuesday, 26 March 2013

Ever wondered why Britain claims to be the market leader in counter-insurgency or, how this diminutive island-based state earned such a world-wide reputation for its ‘success’ in this intensely political category of warfare?

When Aaron Edwards began research for this book in 2008 he was determined to try and find an answer to the question: if Britain was the ‘market leader’ in counter-insurgency, then why was its military doing so badly in Iraq and Afghanistan? An elementary proposition one might think, but he remained unconvinced that there was a deliberate strategy being followed, especially since many of the cases frequently mentioned in dispatches by military commanders were anything but outright ‘successes’.

His scepticism soon turned to disbelief when he visited British forces in Iraq in 2008. There, the successful ‘charge of the knights’ operation had just broken the back of the militias in downtown Basra, but it could not hide the impression that the British were ‘losing’ and had now thrown their lot into drawing down their presence.

When he returned from Iraq he began to question whether Britain’s armed forces were experiencing a case of déjà vu. British withdrawal from Palestine in 1948 and Aden in 1967 offered historical precedents more suited to comparison that the measured successes of Malaya and Northern Ireland.

The more he spent time in the archives and the more he interviewed eyewitnesses of these small wars, the more it seemed likely that Britain had not been as successful, either politically or militarily, as some overenthusiastic and, ultimately, uncritical commentators had claimed.

To be sure, Britain’s reputation vis-à-vis its small wars after 1945 has been somewhat mixed.

After several years of painstaking research across the United Kingdom and on the ground, Aaron Edwards has written an account of Britain’s small wars that highlights the political dynamics informing, constraining and enabling the employment of military force in ‘small wars’. He profiles the strategy-making processes at work amongst the politicians, civil servants and military commanders who orchestrated these small wars, from Palestine at the end of the Second World, through Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus and Aden in the mid-Twentieth Century and beyond to more contemporary conflicts in Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan.

With a particular focus on Britain’s small wars since 1945, Defending the Realm? will be of interest to students and scholars of politics, military history, strategy and International Relations.

For further analysis of how ‘lessons’ from Britain’s long history of countering irregular adversaries have been stressed, ignored or misapplied by strategists and defence planners since 1945, see Aaron’s recent policy paper on History and Policy website

Wednesday, 13 March 2013

Dr Deborah Sugg Ryan, Senior Lecturer Histories and
Theories of Design at Falmouth University, has been awarded a Mid-Career
Fellowship by the British Academy for Humanities and Social Sciences. The
scheme attracts strong competition, receiving over 300 outline applications and
awarding only 46 fellowships for 2012-13.

The Fellowship is intended to support outstanding
individual researchers with excellent research proposals, and to promote public
understanding and engagement with humanities and social sciences. The awards
allow recipients time freed from normal teaching and administrative commitments
to devote to the completion of a major piece of research. The Academy also
places emphasis on applicants' evidence of a commitment to public engagement
with and communication of the results of the research during the period of the
Fellowship.

Deborah's research, titled 'Ideal' Homes:
Design, Architecture and Suburban Modernity in England, 1908-2014,
to be published by Manchester University Press, explores the architecture, design and decoration of the ‘ideal' home. It draws
on and extends Deborah's research on the Ideal Home Show, which resulted in her
doctorate (1995), a monograph (1997) and Design Museum exhibition ‘Ideal Homes'
(1993). Deborah says, “Founded in 1908, the Ideal Home Show is the oldest and
longest continuously running commercial exhibition aimed at the public in the
world. Its history gives an unrivaled insight into the public's taste in
architecture, design and all matters that make a house a home.”

Deborah’s research on the Ideal Home Show will result
in a revised version of her book on the Ideal Home Show, updated to include a
discussion of the representation of the sustainable home in the 2000s. She is
also writing a book on the inter-war home for Manchester University Press. Both
books will be published in 2014.

In addition, Deborah is also doing knowledge exchange
with the Ideal Home Show’s owners Media 10 to disseminate her work to visitors.
Lee Newton, CEO of Media-10 said: "On the day we first took charge we were
handed Deborah's fantastic book which really gave us a sense of the history and
importance of what we had bought. In actual fact, it helped us to understand
that more than just buying a business we had become the guardians of a great
British tradition. We are delighted to be in regular contact with Deborah, working
with her over 2012-13 and beyond. It is wonderful that with the support of the
British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship that we can further investigate and
explore the rich history of the Ideal Home Show, dating back to 1908."

Deborah is now halfway through her fellowship. She
says, ‘It has been fascinating to revisit archives that I first used 20 years
ago. Things are so much better catalogued now. I have been able to, for
example, to connect designs for the exhibition by Raymond McGrath in the Royal
Institute of British Architects’ archives with a photo of his scheme as it was
actually enacted in 1933 in the Earls Court & Olympia company archives.
Lots of material, such as digital copies of newspapers, is available online,
something that didn’t exist when I started my PhD in 1990. I have recently
found photos of the first Ideal Home Exhibition in 1908 in the Daily Mirror,
which was the first newspaper to include photos. The photos include an image of
a suffragette invasion of the exhibition. This is really significant, as until now
I thought only one photo had survived! I am currently pursuing sources of
funding for a project to bring all the Ideal Home Show archive material
together online into a digital portal, which would be of immense use to
academics, schools, designers, architects and the exhibitions industry”.

Deborah is also working on a funding bid to build a
'house of the future' at the show. This has been a significant feature in the
show's history, most notably with houses by RA Duncan and S Rowland Pierce's in
1928; Wells Coates and David Pleydell Bouverie's Sunspan House in 1934; Alison
& Peter Smithson in 1956 and Nigel Coates' Oyster House in 1998. Deborah is
planning to meet with a group of leading academics in design, architecture,
geography, anthropology and energy policy at the show this year as a first
step.

Deborah has given several talks this year on her
research (which you can find detailed on her academia page).

She has also been commissioned by the Oxford
Dictionary of National Biography to write entries on two people associated with
the history of the show:

1. Thomas Wareham Smith (1874-1938): advertising director
of the Daily Mail, who founded the Ideal Home Exhibition in 1908.

2. Nancie Clifton Reynolds (1903-1931) [real name
Agnes Margaret Warden Hardie], Girton graduate and expert on housework who
demonstrated labour-saving appliances at the Ideal Home
Exhibition, organised other women demonstrators, and wrote articles in the
catalogue.

Formed 10 years ago, Media 10 Limited is a
multi-award winning company with a wealth of experience and a vibrant culture. Media 10 are a privately owned company based in
Loughton, Essex employing 180 staff and have fast become one of the leading
players in the events industry as a result of the hugely successful Grand
Designs Live and the country’s largest consumer exhibition – The Ideal Home
Show.

For 2013
Media 10 has been asked to organise The Coronation Festival, a one-off 4 day
event held in the gardens of Buckingham Palace, to mark the 60th
year of Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation.

Other
events in the portfolio include 100% Design, Britain and Ireland’s Next Top
Model Live, Clerkenwell Design Week, The London Design Trail, FutureDrive,
Destination Star Trek London, The Ideal Home Show at Christmas and The Ideal
Home Show Scotland.
Media 10’s award winning magazines include Icon, Grand Designs, On Office, The
Selfbuilder, Gurgle magazine, The Clerkenwell Post and M the music magazine
published for the MCPS-ORS Alliance.

The British Academy, established by Royal Charter in
1902, is the national body that champions and supports the humanities and
social sciences. It aims to inspire, recognise and support excellence and high
achievement across the UK and internationally. For more information, please visit
www.britac.ac.uk. Follow the British Academy on Twitter
@britac_news

Falmouth University is the only independent Higher
Education institution in Cornwall with the right to award degrees in its own
name. The University has two campuses – on Woodlane in Falmouth and
Tremough in Penryn (which it owns and jointly manages with the University of
Exeter). Falmouth is a founding partner in the Combined Universities in
Cornwall (CUC), a unique initiative to promote regional economic regeneration
through Higher Education, funded mainly by the European Union (Objective One
and Convergence), the South West Regional Development Agency and the Higher
Education Funding Council for England, with support from Cornwall Council.